The Argument is Over

They sat in the car at the station once a week for years, the Complete and Total Loser and his father. After dinner, Monday evenings, usually. The trains ran once an hour at that time. Perhaps both knew when leaving for the train that the train would be on time and that the drive from the house to the station took just two or three minutes, but there was always time, ten minutes at least for the two men to sit in wait and talk, away from the Loser's ailing mother, who could be difficult at times, much as he loved her. She died last October.
The more interesting parts of both their lives were in the past. The Loser put the focus on his father's past. He was in his eighties, then nineties. How many more chances would there be? Few -- his father died last December.
At this time of year the Loser's father would talk about how it was his favorite time of the year. The last weeks of August, early September. Same opinion, year after year. It was because of his time in the Boy Scouts, in the early 1930s. The troop would go to the relative wilderness of New Jersey where his father, a city boy, experienced silent nights unmarred by the noise of the elevated train a block away, sunsets over trees instead of buildings. He was in the Scouts for just a few years. Amazing how the experience stayed so fresh for eighty years. 
The Loser would say that it wasn't his favorite season as he was not in New Jersey but the city, where the heat and humidity still punished. Same opinion, year after year. 
Nevermore.

This station, this car, the one nearest the camera.

Groups and The Loser

An open toolbox.

The Complete and Total Loser is not a joiner. There were no Boy Scout retreats, no frat house antics for him in college, no men's groups in the 1990s, sitting in fake sweat lodges, banging synthetic drums and crying about the good things his father did or didn't do for him. No yoga classes now, becoming one with his body and the cosmos while patting himself on the back for not judging the inferior posers around him.
Part of the Loser wishes he could do such things. How nice it would have been to have support in college, to have "brothers" to offer him a beer after a day of classes, to hold parties with, parties girls would attend. Then later, to move up the ranks as the college years passed, garnering responsibility, instructing freshman in the ways of the fraternity as they stood before him at attention with pillowcases over the heads hoping that they may one day be ... him.
It's been shown that those who join groups early in life do better in the workplace. They're more more comfortable in social settings, backslapping at gatherings, exerting leadership. Most success at a company, they say, depends on political skills rather than talent and ability.
All fair enough. But the Loser cannot, as people have advised him to over the years, fake it till he makes it. He is to this day stunned when he imparts information to coworkers and it is absorbed and followed. He wants to shout, "Don't you know what I am?" at them.
Part of why he doesn't join is fear of rejection. Not a new fear. He experienced it when young. The derisive laughter at his attempts to be knowing and cool. The labeling by his brother as a tag-a-long and a dummy as he limped after he and his friends. The torsos of older children angled away from him as they shared secrets. His deformity kept him from the jock crowd. His group was the future homosexuals, computer geeks and poets. But they were smarter than he was and barely tolerated him.
Another reason is one he seldom admits, even to himself. It's that what if he did join a group, have the strength of legions behind him, yet still failed? The Loser's life is devastating enough as is.
His favorite memories now of his youth follow this: Age 10, home from school on a Friday afternoon. It's four in the afternoon. He's eaten two bowls of Cheerios, drinking the sweetened milk from the bowl. His big brothers aren't home and his mother has gone shopping, which promises bags with cookies and cereal with prizes in the boxes later. He has found in the trash or the basement a complex device that interests him. An alarm clock. A miniature reel-to-reel tape recorder. He dissects it with small tools from one of his father's several toolboxes, marveling at its intricacy, the little gears and transistors. Rare moments of concentrated exploration pass. Dummy that he is, he can't figure out the workings, but it doesn't matter; it's the journey that he enjoys.